


Lips of an Angel

by Luce_cm



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Lost Love, Modern Era, Post-Break Up, Songfic, Viking Era, mentions of cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28839045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luce_cm/pseuds/Luce_cm
Summary: Two one shots based off the song 'Lips of an Angel' by Hinder, one taking place in the Viking era and another in a Modern AU. They work separately, but they both are based of the request of a reunion between Ivar and Reader after they have broken up (and moved on with other people), when they both still have feelings for each other.
Relationships: Freydis/Ivar (Vikings), Ivar (Vikings)/Reader, Ivar (Vikings)/You, reader/oc
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Vikings Era Version

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader returns to Kattegat after years away. She doesn’t plan to stay, but is summoned by Ivar, the man she left behind, who is married now.

Kattegat is still the same, you realize, it is as if Aslaug still sits on that throne.

In a way, you think she still does.

Álfarr’s hand is a comfortable weight on your back, and his warmth helps you thaw from the cold of memories and regret that took a hold of you the moment you crossed those walls.

_“You cannot leave me!” His voice is an enraged snarl, his hand is gripping tight at the axe on the table._

_You know it is madness to turn your back on Ivar the Boneless, you know it is madness to ignore the rage in his eyes. Still, you walk out of that worn-down church, and surprisingly, you survive._

And because the man you are travelling with, the man that claims to love you and to know you love him too, is too smart for his own good, he notices the way you wish for nothing more than to leave this place you just returned to.

And so he tries reminding you of what you have returned for, of the life you will be able to have once you spend one winter in Kattegat.

“I was thinking, after this, we could travel to Ribe,” Álfarr offers casually, glancing at you from the corner of his eye, “The Danes are sure to welcome you back.”

“Hmm,” You reply, nodding your head, and because he deserves it, because you can’t forget what made you left Kattegat or what has made you return, you offer a smile, “I don’t know if they would welcome you, though.”

“I fought against Angantyr _once_ ,” He reminds you with a chuckle. After a moment, he brings you close and presses a kiss to the side of your head, “Besides, more than a year ago I was convinced-…”

“Convinced? You make it sound as if-…”

“I was _convinced_ by a beautiful Danish woman to leave those wars behind,” Álfarr continues with a knowing smile, ignoring your glare of protest. “And I don’t regret it.”

“Well let’s hope she doesn’t regret this, eh?” You try around a deep breath, a smile that feels fake.

One winter. Only one winter in Kattegat, and then Álfarr will be at your side wherever the Gods will take you. Such was the pledge he made, and the deal you agreed to.

____

Long before the night that now envelops you had settled, word had reached you that _the King calls for you_ , and all you’ve been able to do since that thrall delivered the message was to consider the cost of running away, cowardly as it may be.

Reminiscent of those last weeks before he drove you away, before you left him behind.

_“Ivar calls for you.” Hvitserk tells you with a sigh, taking a seat at your side with an exhaustion that is more than physical._

_“What for? He listens only to his own voice lately.” You quip bitterly, but still stand up and with a soft touch of the Prince’s shoulder, you answer a call that hurts your pride, your hope._

Álfarr’s steps approaching you take you away from the dangerous lull of memories.

“Are you going to go?” He asks without preamble, taking a seat in front of you.

You sigh, “If the King calls for me-…”

Álfarr chuckles bitterly, interrupting you, “Ah, of course. The King summoning a Völva, nothing more. Surely not your ex-lover wanting to see you again.”

“Do you want me to say no? Not many survive denying Ivar.”

“You survived leaving him.”

“Yes. I left him,” You repeat pointedly, not intending to withstand foolish jealousy. But because what the years made out of you isn’t happy with the way he is soothed slightly at your reminder, you add, “I left him when he tried keeping me chained.”

And Álfarr was always a smart man, it was one of the reasons you first trusted him. So in response to the threat you don’t voice, he only shrugs, “You wouldn’t leave me.”

Your eyebrows raise at the unwavering certainty, “What makes you think that?”

“Nothing could make you wish to return to Kattegat until me,” Álfarr offers you a smile, that you almost start returning, “I still consider it a feat, to have been able to sway you.”

You drink down the last of your mead, tilting your head back and trying to chase away bitterness with the honeyed drink.

“You _swayed_ me the moment I found you dying and chose to save you, you fool.” You quip, betraying a fond smile that he returns.

Without any more words, you stand up. Your hand traces the outline of his shoulders, strong and familiar, as you walk out the door.

____

Ivar waits for you sitting in what looks like an adjacent room to the throne room.

You wish you could say he looks the same, you wish you could say he still has the face, the eyes, of the man you once loved.

But his face is darkened by shadows and something more sinister than that, his eyes are colder and crueler than you ever had the misfortune of seeing them.

It still makes a pang of pain travel to your chest, to the place where your heart ought to be if you hadn’t carelessly given it away years ago, to see him before you, in the flesh, not a dream or a memory.

“My King.” You bow your head.

“Say my name,” Ivar orders gruffly, and at your startled expression when you lift your gaze to his, he amends, “We’ve-…Don’t act like we are strangers. Call me by my name.”

“Alright, Ivar,” You concede, the familiar sound of his name on your lips still managing to make your chest tighten. You take a seat in the chair across from him that was offered, and fold your hands over your lap to keep yourself from fidgeting. “Why did you call for me?”

“You arrive at a Kingdom and don’t dare visit the King, hm?” He taunts without missing a beat, “You used to have better manners.”

 _And you used to avoid playing these games with me_ , you think, but bite back the words.

“I needn’t bother any king with an announcement of my arrival,” You remind him, “I am no one of importance, of fame.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” A soft and dainty voice says, making a chill run down your spine even before you see the blonde approaching from the shadows. She offers a smile, but the eyes of the Queen of Kattegat are as cold as the King’s. “You’re the Völva that granted the Black Danes many victories, aren’t you?”

You watch, frozen in your place, as she approaches Ivar with ease, resting one delicate hand on his shoulder, standing by his side.

Trying to keep your eyes from following the movement of Ivar’s hand that goes to touch hers where it rests on his shoulder, you reply, “I have granted no man any victory.”

“The Gods did, but in no little thanks to your work, your magic. I have heard of you,” She insists, and you frankly do not know what to do with her false warmth. Looking into her eyes feels like watching a flame from the other side of a glass window, an illusion, a façade. “And I am honored you’re here.”

You bow your head in acceptance, “Thank you, Queen Freydis.”

She betrays a wider smile, a more feral smile, and your blood runs cold.

“Ah, you know my name. You have heard of me too, then?”

You feel like you’re being ambushed, so instead of giving her an answer, you return your gaze to the King.

“Why was I summoned here?”

Ivar regards you in silence, eyes slightly narrowed and a cold cruelty in the slight curve of his smile.

Still, he gestures with his hand, dismissing his wife, ordering her to leave the two of you alone.

“Word is you aren’t here to stay.”

“Just for the winter.”

“A Völva, and one always close to the sons of Ragnar at that,” He lists, leaning forward in his seat, elbows resting on armored knees, “I could have use for you.”

You feel cold creeping over you, and lean back.

“Use?”

“It is a matter of time before Freydis becomes pregnant with my child,” Ivar comments with what to anyone else would look like nonchalance, but you hear the cruelty behind the words. “I could use a witch weaving her magic to protect my child and wife.”

It _hurts_ , it hurts at a deep part of your chest, so much so you almost want to look down to see if there’s a gaping wound where your heart should be.

“There’s many that would be willing to do so, but not me.”

“Why not?”

“My home isn’t Kattegat.”

“Where is it, then? With that blacksmith?” He accuses without missing a beat. The anger in his tone, the accusation, the vitriol, the rage, it is all so familiar.

It is all you left behind, with reason to do so.

“I will put word that Kattegat is in search of a Völva to protect the King and his family,” You say around the foolish and hopeless knot of pain at your throat, “I’m sure someone will be of help.”

Standing up from your seat, you mutter a goodbye and turn your back to the King.

His voice, loud and enraged as he calls your name, makes all of this a familiar scene, and it makes you stop dead on your tracks.

“I didn’t give you permission to leave.” Ivar snarls at you, the sound of a crutch stabbing the ground as he stands up as well.

You take a deep breath, but don’t turn around.

“May I leave, then?”

“No,” He sentences, walking closer, “Not now, and not when winter is over.”

You gasp, “What?”

“I’m keeping you here in Kattegat,” Ivar states, intimidating, venomous, _unfamiliar_ as he towers over you, “I’m King, I can do as I wish with you.”

“I am a free woman,” You remind him, “Only my blood would rule over me, and they are all dead. My blood or my husband, and you, _Ivar_ , are neither.”

_“You cannot command me!” You insist with a laugh, defiant even as you tilt your head to the side to let him continue his thorough exploration of your neck with his lips and tongue._

_“Hm, you forget who leads the army_ you _fight for, witch.” He teases, a breathed laugh against your neck when you pull on his hair, offended at the title_

_“No one but my family commands me, Ivar.”_

_“They are all dead.”_

_“Not all of them,” You quip, a foolish knot on your stomach tightening at the conversation you’re about to start, “Family isn’t just blood. One day I will be married, and my husband will be my family.”_

_“So, no one but your blood or your husband would dare rule over you,” He intones, pulling back and searching your eyes, “Why do I have the feeling it wouldn’t be so easy to make you surrender?”_

_“Because you have good judgement?” You offer with a tentative laugh._

_Ivar only smiles, and leans down to capture your mouth in his. His kisses never fail to make your heart beat so fast you hear it in your head._

_In the way his hands tighten over whatever part of you he has a hold of, in the way his tongue demands entrance to your mouth, in the way you feel the soft sounds he cannot keep trapped; you find yourself gone, enthralled,_ his _._

_When he pulls back, his eyes, darkened and burning, linger on your kiss-bitten lips for a few moments._

_“With those lips of yours, love, it would be very easy to make any man surrender.” Ivar confesses in a hoarse whisper, and past the pang of heat his words and the way he’s looking at you send through you, you smile._

_“My lips?” He hums an agreement, and in the few moments you have him enthralled, your smile turns devious, “_ Where _?”_

Ivar grits his teeth at the reminder, and the flash of pain you imagine seeing for a moment could make you believe he remembers the same moments you do, the same life you wish you could have lived till your last breath, the same world you wish you had never left behind.

“That blacksmith you came with.”

“He’s a warrior, and you know his name.” You tell him, aware you’re prodding a dangerous beast but still doing so with an arrogant tilt of your chin.

“Does he know about me?” Ivar asks, voice low and dangerous, “About us? About what you promised me?”

“Does _she_?” You ask, unable to keep the bitterness from your tone.

Ivar’s reply is immediate, “Yes.”

And with a simple word weighs on you the realization that either she means much more to him than you ever imagined, or you still do. You aren’t sure you want to know the answer.

“I have to go,” You tell him, stepping back and lowering your gaze to the dark wood under your feet. “Tell your brother I would love to see him. I’ve missed him.”

“You’ll just leave?”

“No, I will stay until winter passes. I-…”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” He accuses, furious movements of his crutch as he approaches you again. “You’ll leave me again.”

The words tug at a pathetic and foolish part of your heart, a part of your heart that you never got back. A part of your heart that was left behind in some old church in York.

Still, you offer truth, a truth that lacerates at your throat on the way out, “I never returned to you, Ivar.”

His free hand grabs roughly at your arm, and his breathing is fast, his eyes are searching yours desperately.

_The furious glint in his eye, the twinge of madness in his scowl, the phrase he would repeat over and over as if he could make it truth by will alone, “You will not leave me.”_

“You are here, Fate brought you back to me.”

“Fate brought your wife to you,” You remind him, pain interwoven in your every word, “Fate brought Álfarr to my side. Fate pulled _us_ apart, Ivar.”

But he shakes his head, stubborn and desperate. For a moment, in the way the snarl in his lips trembles, in the way he blinks quickly, you see the man you love.

“No.” Is all he says, before he brings you to him roughly, and claims your mouth.

You have been familiar with magic all your life, and you know it is something other than it, but it feels like magic when you let yourself give into his kiss. It feels like something stronger than magic when you find yourself giving in to Ivar, breaths quickened as you watch him answer the command of the gentle push of your hand and sit on the chair at his back.

Kissing him, it is anger, it is anger and lust and grief and love, you won’t deny it. It is biting and demanding and rough and _him_.

Getting lost in the feel, the smell, the taste, of him was always easy. Terrifyingly easy, once.

And so you lose yourself in the push and pull of your bodies moving as one, in the way he demands with bites and kisses and soft sounds breathed against your lips the surrender you refuse to give, in the way he lets you try and lure him to that same surrender with your lips on his skin and the intonation of his name on your lips that still makes him tremble.

His hands are rough and demanding as they grip your hips, and he makes you move above him with a punishing pace. And it feels like he is trying to punish you. For leaving him. For returning.

Your own hands grip onto his shoulders, nails digging into the skin and drawing blood, traying to dispel the touch of any other with each drop. So that there’s a bit of you left with him, a proof. Of how you once were his. Of how he’s still yours.

____

You lay in the quiet that lets you pretend you never left that world you once loved so much, in the peace that makes your chest ache for the unsaid vows you broke.

Ivar’s head rests against your chest, letting you every once in a while feel the drag of his mouth over your skin, lazily retracing a path he bit and kissed his way through earlier. Your fingers, aching to be once again familiar with the feel of his skin, the softness of his hair, travel wherever you can reach, ceaselessly.

It is as if in each breath shared, in each moan that trembled past parted lips, in each moment of ecstasy and of pain; the anger and the resentment and the hate gave way, let the world that once was take a hold of the moment you live -bask- in now.

The quiet is broken by a soft murmur of your name, and your chest pulls tight at the sound of it in Ivar’s voice, at the return of the fragile softness, the hidden gentleness, you once were the sole recipient of.

“I have…dreamt of you, these passing years,” He tells you, even a confession such as this traced by underlying anger. He presses yet another kiss to the skin above your heart, “I have missed you.”

“So have I, more…more than I could ever say.” You offer, closing your eyes to keep tears from filling your eyes.

“I don’t want you to leave me again.” Ivar whispers, voice so, so quiet.

You release a breath that shakes and trembles past your lips, “You and I are fated to say goodbye, I think. Always were.”

He lifts his head, strikingly blue eyes meeting yours.

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“You have a wife, Ivar, I can’t-…”

“You can be my wife too,” He offers, making your heart both soar and break. “You wouldn’t be queen, but you never minded for pow-…”

“Ivar,” You interrupt, voice shaking, “Listen to what you’re saying. You’re asking me to be your second wife. To take Freydis as my sister-wife.”

“She won’t object,” He says it with such certainty that it sickens you, and you scramble to stand, to part from his embrace. “She’d do anything I asked her to. She will accept.”

You are shaking your head, putting the shield your dress serves as back up over your skin.

“ _I_ could never accept,” You tell him, and because you want to linger for a moment longer in the sun, in the brief paradise where you’re allowed to see the real him shining in his blue eyes; you walk closer one last time and let your fingers trace the side of his face lovingly, smiling even if it is a goodbye, “No woman that loves you would settle for half of you.”

Whether you speak of her and her faults, or you and your hopeless heart; you don’t know.


	2. Modern Era Version

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After almost two years since the breakup, the last thing Ivar was expecting was a call from Reader in the dead of night.

“He asked me to marry him.”

Your words drop on Ivar’s chest with such weight he almost gasps, and parted lips try bringing air to lungs that cannot function, that remain paralyzed.

_You’re marrying someone else._

He tells you to wait, or he thinks he does, hopes he does. All he can think of is getting out of this fucking bed and being able to talk to you, to…to make sense of the world again.

You haven’t called him in…Gods, in so long. All he has had of you for almost two years is the polite smiles and the civil conversations to be held when your family and his get together.

But now, now you call him in the middle of the night, saying his name like you used to, and telling him…telling him…

_You’re marrying someone else._

Getting onto his chair has never proven so difficult, with shaking hands and panicked breaths. He moves towards the leaving room, leaving behind a bedroom of two people that have seen someone else when they whisper their _I love you_ ’s for months now, that have pretended not to hear names not their own when they lose themselves in each other since the beginning.

“Talk to me, princess.” Ivar asks once he gets to the living room, free hand tapping anxiously at the wheel of his chair as he hears you take a few deep breaths.

“Emil asked me to marry him.”

He grits his teeth, “I got that part.”

“I…I don’t know why I called, I just…” “I should have said yes. He’s…he’s a sweet guy, and my dad loves him, and…”

Ivar refuses to sit there like an idiot and hear you sing praises to the man you’re dating, and it is with a bubble of anger and resentment that he calls out your name, stopping you.

You sigh, and it feels so familiar his chest pulls tight, “It’s been so long since you’ve said my name.”

His eyes fall closed, and he drags a hand over his face, trying to find some sort of stability in this madness. He hates how you still have this hold over him, how with only a few words you turn him inside out, leave him raw and vulnerable.

“Wh-Why do you tell me this?” He asks, tilting his head back and resting his head on the backrest of the chair, looking up at a darkened ceiling. “To torture me? To play some kind of-…”

“Because I couldn’t say yes,” You whisper, and at the way you seem to be so close to crying his own chest hurts. “Ivar, I…I…”

“What, princess?” He presses, because he cannot hold his breath any longer, because you pulled him under with the sweet sound of his name on your lips and he hasn’t been able to breathe properly since you called.

“I shouldn’t have called,” You mutter, almost to yourself, “You’re with someone else, I-…”

“She isn’t you.” Ivar tells you, too-late regretting being so honest, sounding so pathetically desperate.

You remain silent for so long he almost wants to hang up, to end this whirlwind that has made his world be upside down, to save himself the humiliation of a rejection.

“I never moved on, Ivar,” You confess, and in a sigh that he can close his eyes and feel by his ear as if you were there, you seem to find your strength. Because after a moment, you clear your throat and sentence, “But I have to.”

He’s left alone with silence on the other line.

_He’s angry and drunk and he feels broken, and you have to answer for what you’ve done to him His fingers are tapping on the call button before he can think twice about it, but all that meets him is silence._

And sitting alone in a darkened living room of a place he doesn’t know, because he had to leave his last apartment haunted by the ghost of you; he finds himself alone and heartbroken.

You’re marrying someone else.

Someone that isn’t him.

You’re loving someone else.

Someone that isn’t him.

He feels the prick of tears in his eyes, the tightening of his throat, the restless energy to _do something_ , stop this…this chaos you put inside of him, this mess you’ve made of his heart or whatever is left of it.

You always did breeze -barrel- into his life and turn everything upside down, made him lose control over his heart, his mind, his everything. Since the beginning.

And now you call him to…to what? To tell him the woman he loves is getting engaged to some fucking guy that doesn’t deserve her, that could never love her the way he could? To let him know you’ve moved on and are going to marry this fucker and have his children and all that while still holding Ivar’s heart with an iron grip?

No, no, he won’t be played with, he won’t be humiliated like this.

Ivar pulls out his phone with shaking hands, jaw set so tight he fears his teeth will break.

Two can play that game. Two can ‘move on’. Two can inflict pain.

He’s searching for an engagement ring before he can think twice about it. Scrolls down countless diamond rings, trying to find the most expensive-looking one.

Freydis will agree, she is as lost as he is, she will agree. He can convince her if she has doubts, he is sure of it.

Imagining putting a ring on her finger feels wrong, so fucking wrong when he still holds on to the one he won for you at that stupid fair you forced him to go to.

_You extend your left hand excitedly, almost bouncing on your feet, and for a moment Ivar can pretend it isn’t a plastic ring what he’s putting on your finger. You bring his lips to yours and seal a smile against his lips, “This one will do till you give me the real one, Lothbrok.”_

The night everything fell to pieces you gave him back that plastic ring, like it meant something, like _he’d_ meant something. And he still has it, he still keeps it safe next to the arm ring his father gifted him.

That last night -it wasn’t the last time he ever saw you, he has seen you afterwards many times, but it was the last night of the two of you, of what had been and what could be- still replays in his head in his worst times. And his best too. Ivar cannot let go of the could have been’s, cannot move on from you, not when his legs are worse than usual and he feels alone and cursed, not when his father praises his work in the family business and he feels like he’s on top of the world.

And that night that repeats in his head taunts him with the last -not the last, but in a way they were- words you said to him, “ _I wish we could be strangers again.”_

It is with an angry twist of his lips, with a frustrated growl that is kept at bay by gritted teeth that Ivar stops searching for the engagement ring to give Freydis.

What will change, if he makes her his fiancée? You will still be with someone else, marrying someone else, loving someone else.

Before he closes the browser where some expensive and pretentious-looking store offers him rings to cover up regret, his eye catches on one of the diamond pieces. It is strikingly similar to the one he gifted you as a joke that ended up being so much more, and when he taps to see the name, Ivar’s breath catches.

Angel.

_Your eyes are adorably focused on the red marks on his chest, a small frown between your brows._

_It is almost without thinking, almost startling him, that you lean closer and press the softest of kisses over one of the marks, making Ivar feel so unbearably_ warm.

 _He finds himself smiling, like the lovesick idiot he is. And for the brief moment where your lips are pressed against his skin and your warmth is enveloping him and he is still riding that high of feeling utterly_ yours _¸ he finds that he doesn’t care if he is playing the part of the enthralled fool chasing after a girl that is so out of his reach. Because in these small instants where it is just him and just you, he feels loved._

_“Are you trying to heal me with kisses, princess?”_

_“Maybe,” You mumble, before offering him a smile that is almost blinding. “I’m good with kisses.”_

_“Mhm, you are,” For good measure Ivar puts his hand at the back of your head and brings your lips to his own. After a few breaths, he continues, “You got the lips of an angel.”_

_He manages to make you snort with a roll of your eyes, clearly flustered even if you try to write it off as cheesiness._

_“That’s a song, and you know it.”_

_He moves closer to you, pressing a kiss right over the dip of your collarbones, “Is it?”_

_Your answering laugh sounds breathy and soft by his ear._

He doesn’t give himself time to think it through before he’s given his credit card number and made the necessary arrangements.

He is calling you before he can think about it and back out too.

“I b-bought plane tickets, and booked a hotel. Vestfold.”

“Vestfold? The same h-…”

“Yes,” He interrupts, although some of his anxiety recedes at the fact that you don’t immediately laugh and hung up. “A week. Will you be there?”

“Ivar…”

This is madness, he is being crazy and impulsive and desperate, but he finds he doesn’t care.

“You aren’t sure, you wouldn’t have called me if you were sure and happy with him,” He presses, hand tightening over the phone, “One week, princess.”

The silence that follows his words is deafening, and Ivar feels like he is dangling over the edge of a cliff, needing but one word to either fall or return to safety.

You sigh, and it sounds tremulous, “What time does the plane take off?”

____

He knows it is not rational, he knows it is stupid and crazy. But Ivar finds himself trying to convince you to stay with him with sex.

Whoever this other man is can probably give you more stability than Ivar ever did, with his anger and his pain and his jealousy. He can probably give you a normal life where the name Lothbrok doesn’t hang over your head with the promises of unfaithfulness and broken marriages. He can probably give you much more than he can.

But he can’t make you feel like Ivar can.

He can’t make your lips -hypnotizing, dangerous, lips- part in ecstasy like Ivar can, he can’t make you moan and whimper and say his name in that sweet way of yours, he can’t make you shed that pretend softness and let you draw pleasure and pain and blood and pleas from his lips, he can’t make you come like he can.

And in the week he gets to have you, both of you pretending there’s nothing wrong with this, both of you satiating more than a year’s worth of hunger on each other’s skin; Ivar does try his best to show you this.

To show you that if nothing else, he can make sure your body will never forget him.

That for all the thing a life with him would take from you, it would give you this, whatever it is worth. His body, his heart, _him_.

He isn’t a sucker for punishment, or…not that kind of punishment, so of course he doesn’t say anything. He pretends, alongside you, that there’s not a world past this, that there isn’t a choice to make at the end of this brief paradise.

And it is easy, to forget, to pretend.

Waking up every day to the sight of the snow covering the small hotel in the middle of nowhere, with you pressed against him in some way or another; getting to wake you up by making you moan his name, getting to play idly with your fingers as you both look out the window and watch the sun rise; it lets him keep this fantasy alive.

Spending the day and night lost in you, in your scent and your touch and your _lips,_ it lets him pretend the last year never happened, it lets him pretend this is his life. What it always has been, what it always should be.

And Ivar dares think it is the same for you, because your left hand holds no ring and your eyes are loving and warm as you look at him, because your smiles are easy and your kisses are as if the time apart never happened.

For the first time in a long time, Ivar feels happy, Ivar feels -naively, wretchedly maybe- loved.

But, all good things end, especially for him.

And soon it has been a week since you agreed to meet him here.

You wake him up with the delicate and warm caress of your fingers up and down his back, and all Ivar can offer in response to your good morning is a hum as he sinks further into the pillows.

After a moment, he lifts a heavy hand and lets it find a home on your thigh, moving up and down and delighting himself in the way you fidget whenever he creeps too high up.

But because one of you has to say it, Ivar turns his head on the pillow so he can see you where you sit cross-legged at his side, and whispers, “Time’s up, isn’t it?”

“Mhm,” You tell him with a nod. After a few moments of silence, you sigh, “I should have known…earlier. I should have been strong enough to face the truth.”

He swallows down the apprehension, the knot of tension in his stomach, “Which is?”

“I could have never accepted that ring,” You sentence, and with almost as man words as that night a week ago when you called and dropped the weight of the world on Ivar’s chest, now you free him of it. You shake your head at yourself, “I feel like a monster. He went down on one knee, gave me some speech about how he loved me, and how…how he wanted to _deserve me_ ; and I couldn’t answer him.

Ivar sits up when he hears the bitter laugh that leaves your lips.

“My boyfriend proposed to me, and the first thing I did wasn’t call my mom or my sister to tell them the news, or…or take a picture of the ring and post an announcement, or…I don’t know, _fucking_ _my_ _fiancé_!” Your words end with a shout, and you drop your head to your hands, “No, the first thing I did was call you. Because…Gods, Ivar, despite everything, I don’t see the rest of my life with anyone but _you_.”

Nothing could stop him then from leaning close to you, from having his hand find yours and your fingers intertwine. He lifts your hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to your fingers.

“Do you think it is any different for me, hm?”

This time you do smile, and it looks freer than earlier, and you still look at him with the same softness and the same warmth even if the fantasy is over.

“We are hopeless, aren’t we?”

“You told me once that you wished we could be strangers again, start over,” Looking into your eyes he lowers his voice and promises, “We can do that.”

“We’ve spent the last week in a hotel room together. That isn’t something strangers do.”

He shrugs, a downward curve of his mouth, “Could be. When our children ask, we’ll say we met on some bar while on holiday, and spent the best week of our lives so far fucking each other in some hotel in Vestfold.”

His heart beats fast in his chest because Gods, he is getting ahead of himself, he is being reckless and crazy and…

“That’s not something you can tell the children, Ivar.”

He laughs with you, not so much at the levity of the situation, but at the weight you lift from his heart with the curve of your smile.

When the moment passes, the smile you offer him is the same one he remembers, the excited and scared and loving curve of your lips -tempting, perfect, lips- of that day when he offered you a plastic ring and a promise.

“I didn’t call too late, did I?”

And he gets to kiss you again, this time not in borrowed time, not in fantasy, not in fear of what is to come.


End file.
